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Seas Rising Faster Than Projected

Posted by Soulskill on from the invest-in-canoes dept.

New submitter zenyu writes "IPCC's 2mm per year estimate for sea level rise at current CO2 levels has proven too optimistic. Sea levels have been rising 3.2mm per year in the last two decades. The IPCC's 50 cm — 100 cm projection for the next century may prove equally optimistic."

36 of 605 comments (clear)

  1. It's ok. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just tell those seas you don't believe in global we fucked up the climate change.

    That's the cheap choice. And it's all we're gonna do.

  2. Energy companies will fight this report by mozumder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is their entire purpose in life - to force you to pay to do anything by using their energy resources. And, they're going to do everything they can to make sure any bad news about energy consumption goes away.

    Remember kids, this is why you fight the energy companies. Do everything you can to fight them back!

  3. Denier by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Do you deny that Americans are generally the cause to all of the world's problems?

    1. Re:Denier by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, we didn't follow you into the collective clusterfuck that was Iraq... and we've been enjoying universal health care and other communist evils for some time now, so would you like to elaborate how exactly we are doing the US's bidding?

    2. Re:Denier by somersault · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only thing universal healthcare brought you was waiting lines and mediocre care if you're in any country but norway/sweden/denmark and maybe the UK

      Mediocre care is better than no care.

      Plus people can still go private if they choose.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    3. Re:Denier by k2r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > The only thing universal healthcare brought you was waiting lines and mediocre care

      Average life expectancy:
      USA: 78.1 years
      UK: 79 years
      Germany: 79.3 years
      France: 81 years

      I think I'll keep my German mediocre universal healthcare.

      (Source: http://www.wolframalpha.com/share/clip?f=d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427ev8tivmaqoj )

    4. Re:Denier by will_die · · Score: 5, Informative

      You need to read into the numbers to find out why you are wrong. There are two main problems with USA life expectancy numbers:
      1) The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. With the US saving so many premature and all of them counting when they die from being so premature it lowers the US numbers. Also death counting is different, US counts all people who die on its soil for other countries they don't count non-citizens.
      2) To many foreigner who were born in poorer countries. The countries you have listed and other with higher life expectancy have one thing in common fewer percentage of people who were born outside of that country or were born in poor countries.
      Look at charts to see life expectancy from ages 5,25,50,75 and that listing changes.

    5. Re:Denier by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The US of A is merely a land mass from which human people do the things they do. Under similar circumstance and opportunity other humans will do similarly. This is a fact of human nature. It has nothing to do with nationality. Let's be clear on this point.

      That the rich and powerful of the US are abusing the rest of the world, I will not deny. The older I get, the more I awaken to it. But this is not really US Americans so much as it is a select group of people within the US. They seem to live in another plane of existence where the law and everything else treats them differently, protected in a cloak of money. They can harm the global economy without trouble to themselves, but a person can shop lift and get prison. I think the notion is clear enough.

      It all happens because of greed you know. China wants more so they sell out their own people and pollute without shame. The US industries have done the same though within a tighter framework of law for centuries. (http://www.wvminesafety.org/disaster.htm) The link just points out one state and one type of industry, but you can pretty much guarantee this is not isolated. It is important to note that the people making decisions and money are completely isolated from problems which may result from their decisions in most cases. For example, several people in the BP incident were charged and convicted of crimes, but not the real decision makers... not the ones at the top.

      But greed... greed... a human condition, not one which is exclusive to residents of a particular land mass. These are crimes of opportunity, not of character.

      I hate to point this out but it is essentially and in practice quite true: Civilization is most advanced when we counter our own nature with a system of law and keep it enforced fairly and without exception. In order to be fair, law must be in the interests of the masses, not in the interests of the few. So religious law and law which supports the interests of a few need to go.

      If anyone thinks "the US" is the problem, they need to look at where the people of the US came from and what those people, when allowed, have done to their world in the past and what they are doing at present. There are a lot of pots calling kettles black.

      We should accept what we are and what we know of our nature. We should acknowledge we already have an effective solution to our weaknesses which we call a framework of constitutional law... and support it. When people protest government, people should demand that law and order prevail. Many people are. But we should focus on the causes here and this is, as I see it, the real cause when you exclude "human nature."

    6. Re:Denier by SilenceBE · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The only thing universal healthcare brought you was waiting lines and mediocre care if you're in any country but norway/sweden/denmark and maybe the UK

      The typical ignorant American answer of really not knowing anything about the world outside. In this European country (Belgium) we don't have long waiting lines or mediocre care. That is not based on some flag waving argument but multiple studies that come out every year. This is the case for most European countries BTW.

      It is funny as Americans tend always to point as greece as THE example of the "socialist" plan going bad. The situation in Greece has nothing to do with healthcare or socialism but with clientelism, fraud, tax evasion (which for American companies is a sport), etc.

    7. Re:Denier by prefec2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The only thing universal healthcare brought you was waiting lines and mediocre care if you're in any country but norway/sweden/denmark and maybe the UK. You give up so much control over your existences for this and other handouts and I do not understand why. Do you really want to end up like greece? ..or hell, the USA 20-40 years from now, as it slides into its new status as a chinese satellite?

      First, we do not have waiting lines in hospitals or any other part of the healthcare system in Germany. Especially not for urgent things. Second, when I have a chronic disease, my bill does not rise. I do not go bankrupt over healthcare cost. Third, according to OECD measures. The average US citizen pays $ 6000 for healthcare per year (including state money and including those people who do not have any healthcare) with a service coverage of around 80%, while the so puny Europeans only pay around $ 3000 per year (also including all subsidies) and have a service coverage by 99%. Fourth, the problem in Greece is corruption. And the ever mounting debt is a general problem of our world economy. the US has a much bigger deficit per person and by GDP. Especially when compared to Germany. And that after Germany had to incorporate East Germany in the 1990s.

      However, we are all sitting in the same boat (including China). If we sink, the sink too. And we have all a resource and sustainability problem. And one cause of that is the present constitution of the economic system. That has to be fixed. As well as the resource problem. And yes. The US is not helping with these issues according to past outcomes of global environment conferences. The "We need to drill for more oil"-logic is also flawed. It would be better to start switching then to prolong the present. But, if you do not want to change, Europe or to be more precise the EU can try to do better. You are always welcomed to follow us.

    8. Re:Denier by characterZer0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Also: Big Macs, 64 oz. sodas, and no exercise.

      --
      Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
    9. Re:Denier by Cyberax · · Score: 4, Informative

      " The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. "
      Bullshit. In reality average lifespan in the *US* is calculated WITHOUT taking child mortality into account.

    10. Re:Denier by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Informative

      http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/your-life-expectancy-by-age

      This shows that an average 25 year old in Germany has a longer life expectancy than his counterpart in the U.S. by about 1.2 years.Interestingly, an 80 year old in the U.S. has a longer life expectancy than Germany.

      In all fairness, I am not sure that this spells any significant difference in health care as the U.S. has a much higher mortality rate from car accidents than any European country. Regardless, the original discussion was about other countries having poor health care compared to the US, but these numbers show otherwise.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    11. Re:Denier by tmosley · · Score: 4, Insightful

      20% of GDP per capita for one additional year of life expectancy doesn't really seem worth it.

    12. Re:Denier by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Except America actually spends more than Europeans on healthcare!

      Read it and weep, fuckhead.

  4. I doubt it by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bad news about energy is good news for energy companies, that means they can have a new excuse to charge more for energy.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  5. I've given up by ndogg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've grown extraordinarily pessimistic that anything can or will be done about climate change at this point, and my only thought at this point is that we just need to enjoy what we can until the inevitable self-inflicted pain and suffering we will endure from its affects.

    So let's all party for tomorrow we may die.

    --
    // file: mice.h
    #include "frickin_lasers.h"
    1. Re:I've given up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've grown extraordinarily pessimistic that anything can or will be done about climate change at this point, and my only thought at this point is that we just need to enjoy what we can until the inevitable self-inflicted pain and suffering we will endure from its affects.

      So let's all party for tomorrow we may die.

      Tonight! We dine in HELL!

    2. Re:I've given up by gox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've grown extraordinarily pessimistic that anything can or will be done about climate change at this point, and my only thought at this point is that we just need to enjoy what we can until the inevitable self-inflicted pain and suffering we will endure from its affects.

      We don't know how to solve such problems. The extent we can do with our current political technology is to become increasingly centralized to implement and enforce consistent policies. Which is a much bigger nightmare than global warming and would cause more suffering in the long run. Of course we won't call it suffering then, since we will be educated to know better.

      I'm pessimistic about our ability to solve this problem, but I'm mildly optimistic about the coping part. We can easily adapt. New technologies will deal with the problems we're likely to face. The worst part would still be the politics of it. There is too much friction in resource allocation, which will make it very hard to help threatened populations. There is even more political friction if you want to relocate them.

      Would these issues result in the same kind of centralization? If so, then moving in that direction now would be the lesser evil. It's very hard to reason about.

    3. Re:I've given up by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Before you give up, I think it's worthwhile to examine the kernel of truth in the denialist position.

      When you force a denialist into the corner he'll pull out this chestnut: the history of climate shows greater differences than we're talking about for the next century; there's no "right" temperature for the globe. There's more than a kernel of truth in this, it just misses the fact that there's a big difference between changes that happen over the course of many lifetimes or many lifetimes in the future, and change that happens in the lifetime of people currently inhabiting the planet. It's a bit like somebody saying "fire is part of the natural forest lifecycle" then throwing his lit cigarette butt onto the dry forest floor.

      The differences between conservatives and liberals on this issue is that conservatives fear change we'd have to do something about, and liberals fear change we can't do anything about. But I content there are no such changes we cannot do anything about.

      Humans are adaptable. Change is traumatic, but we can adapt to a "new normal". On one of my favorite forest walks I encounter a visible sign of climate change: a dying grove of eastern hemolock (Tsuga canadensis). Twenty years ago walking into the grove in summer was like walking into a refrigerator. You could not see a patch of sky through the canopy, and sometimes snow drifts survived til June under the eaves of the grove. What's killing the grove is the wooly adgelid, an Asian insect whose northward range is limited by cold winters. When that grove finally dies I will miss it, but future generations won't. They'll see the black birch and rhododendron that replace it as normal, the way I see the red oak and Norway maple that replaced the American Chestnut (once the dominant hardwood species in N. America) as normal. Something will be lost but everyone won't experience loss, just those of us who remember what we used to have. *We* will experience loss, as will our children and grandchildren; but our great-great-great grandchildren won't.

      So what can we do about climate change? First, it's far from clear we can't stop it; we've been so busy debating (at least in political circles) whether climate is changing at all that we haven't really put any serious thought into stopping it. It's far too early to give up hope.

      It's also quite feasible that change can be slowed. People tend to underestimate the utility of that. There's a big difference between a 100cm sea level rise in 100 years and 100cm rise in 200 years; it's much easier and less traumatic to adapt to gradual change than sudden change.

      And we can face squarely the changes that are coming rather than pretending they won't or wringing our hands. That includes preparing for the loss of coastal property and accommodating populations as they abandon of some currently habitable areas. It includes preparing for the emergence of new diseases as the geographic range of pathogens and disease vectors expands. There's preserving species in danger of extinction as their habitat shifts out from under them, and changing crops as rainfall patterns change. Those are huge but achievable tasks that are made much easier by a marginal reduction in the rate of change.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:I've given up by Ost99 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The entire human exodus from Africa was during the last glacial period. And it almost did wipe us out. At some point about 70 000 years ago (in the middle of the last glaciation period) the total human population shrunk to 2 000 individuals - that's one flu outbreak from extinction.

      The changes we are facing now are of a much more dramatic than the gradual cooling over millennia during the last glaciation (4-5 degrees cooling over millennia vs 4-10 degrees increase in less than a century). Absolutely best case if we don't do anything now is +4C in less than 100 years, that's a civilization ending change. Worst case places +4C in 30 years, and +10C within 100 years - that's an extinction level event. - And that's without the possible feedback loops from ocean CO2 release and methane release from the tundras.

      --
      ---- Sig. gone.
    5. Re:I've given up by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >Biological systems can't be so fragile as all that, or we wouldn't be here.

      Wrong. 97% of all species that ever existed are extinct. The history of the earth is filled with massive extinction events wiping out damn near everything alive.
      Life is resilient, even if just a few bacteria survive, in a few million years there'll be a system with plants and animals again.
      But biological systems are incredibly fragile and quite regularly get wiped out.
      You probably KNOW about the dinosaurs, but that wasn't a rare event, the history of earth is littered with hundreds of extinction events - most of them WORSE than that one.

      Life starts over with the left-overs.

      Now see, that's good news in a sense - no matter how badly we fuck up - chances are we can't wipe out life on earth, earth will live on and in a few million years there'll be some other creature who asks "Why are we here ?" - but it's BAD news for us !
      Sufficient disturbance to the ballance and it collapses, and we go down with it (hint: the larger the creature the smaller it's chances of surviving an extinction event - we count as a large creature, small in this context means bacteria and single-celled sea-creatures).

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    6. Re:I've given up by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have a city dweller's concept of how the world works. You're going to starve to death.

  6. One consistent theme by Grayhand · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Every estimate has been overly optimistic. Can anyone see a problem with this? Essentially throw out the best case scenario and look at the worst case scenario as the baseline. Anyone not panicked at the thought of this IS A FOOL! After a decade plus of denial we come out with the worst case scenario is our best case. Basically three foot of ocean level rise is the best we can hope for and the likely result is twice that. Kiss all that coastal property goodbye! Forget all that because it mostly affects rich people. Just look at the Great Lakes. They stand at record levels. Remember this ISN'T the bad this is the best we can expect for the next 100 years and it may get worse after that. Drought is likely to be the norm not to mention storms damage. In 10 or 20 years the conservatives will blame the liberals for not telling them how bad it could get. Okay from a liberal here's how bad it can get, ever see Road Warrior???? That's bad. Good is probably Soylent Green. Any questions????

    1. Re:One consistent theme by kyrsjo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "The rich" might loose their valuable beachfront property, but many poor in Bangladesh and other places will drown.

      A small sadistic part of me is looking forward to see what our right-wing politicians who argue that (a) climate change is a conspiracy and (b) immigrants are evil once the people-flood sets in - hundreds of millions of people are not going to sit quietly on their hands and drown, no matter how much right-wing western politicians wish that is true... Lets just hope there are no mayor shortages before the worlds food production can adjust - but on the other hand, "someone else" will probably get the pointy end of that problem, too...

    2. Re:One consistent theme by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes unfortunately this is being treated as a scientific observation where caution means not making the most extreme claims. It should be treated like an engineering problem where caution means assuming the most extreme claims might be true (and build in a factor of 2 safety).

    3. Re:One consistent theme by WhiteSpade · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Just look at the Great Lakes. They stand at record levels.

      Do you mean record lows or highs? Because the way it's written seems to indicate you think they're at record highs, and that is not the case at all. I am originally from Wisconsin, and dropping lake levels has been a concern for a long time and this year saw a record low for Lake Michigan. The states surrounding the lakes have been actively trying to protect and increase the lake levels, since they had been dropping for so long. Many states (read: the southwest) wanted to run a pipeline from the Great Lakes in order that Arizona can have green grass in their front yards. All of the Great Lake states (and eventually the feds) signed the Great Lakes Compact in order to protect the lakes. In effect, it requires that all water removed from the lakes must be returned.

      Dropping lake levels has a significant economic impact on shipping in the midwest - measured in the billions of dollars (too lazy to find a citation for this, but I've read more than a few reports on this over the years).

      As for the rest of your post, yes sea level are rising, but I think a 3 foot rise in sea levels in the short term is not terribly likely. The seas are rising, this is a problem, but I don't think it serves anyone to overstate the problem. A cm or two is a big enough problem as it is. 3 ft in the short term would be nothing short of catastrophic. Calm down, focus on the problem, readjust to the new data, and contribute to the conversation productively with your newfound context.

      ---Alex

    4. Re:One consistent theme by dkf · · Score: 4, Informative

      Plants love CO2.

      On the other hand, plants aren't so keen on heat stress. There's multiple effects going on, some of which are positive and some negative and many of which are non-linear, and that's why this stuff is so hard to work out: balancing the relative sizes of all these things to get the overall picture (especially in non-equilibrium situations) is viciously difficult.

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
  7. None at all. by robbak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All we are going to do about it is shoot the climate scientists for not doing enough to warn us.

    --
    Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
  8. Regret by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of the most regretful moments of my life was when a few people from an organization I don't remember were visiting my school, claiming that rising sea levels are nothing more than myths and scare stories. I clearly remember the guy in front of the class being all smug, saying "I'm sure you've all seen the movie Water World. Well, that's just Hollywood because the sea is never going to rise. Ice floats on water and has actually a lower density than water, therefore, if it melts, the sea level is going to stay the same or actually -lower-....".

    I was in agony, on the one hand I wanted to shove Antarctica, an entire continent packed with ice, full in his face, but my shyness, fear of being at the center of attention and making a scene by completely discrediting these highborn scientific authorities that had come to talk to us, made me stay quiet.

    Man, how much I regret having stayed quiet.

  9. No significant change for a century. by PerMolestiasEruditio · · Score: 4, Informative

    recent data doesn't show any increase in rate of sea level rise:
    http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
    looking at the decadal rate of increase it has actually been falling off for last 5 years:
    http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sea_level_rise_fig1.jpg
    doesn't appear to be any significant alteration in rate of rise over last 100 years, rate of rise in 30's-60's was about the same as current:
    http://www.oceanclimatechange.org.au/content/images/uploads/2012_sea_level_fig1.jpg

    A rather big factor that needs to be taken into account is that since the 1950's there has been a massive amount of ground water abstraction for agriculture that is estimated to contribute something like 0.4-0.8mm/year to sea level rise (15-25% of total).
    http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2012/05/120531-groundwater-depletion-may-accelerate-sea-level-rise/

  10. Not much of a surprise by rrohbeck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The IPCC always said that various positive feedbacks were not included because the science wasn't clear enough. That always implied that the AR projections were the best possible case, and don't forget that those were the consensus opinion - meaning that if the Saudi delegates didn't agree it wouldn't go in the AR.

    I just hope the AR5 will be a little more realistic and a wake-up call.

    --
    thegodmovie.com - watch it
  11. Don't regret. You were just a kid. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... were visiting my school....

    I assure you that if you spoke up, you would have been belittled by the smug asshole, your teacher would have joined in or told you to shut up, you would have been sent to the office, your parents called, and suspended. You then would probably would have been forced to apologize to those kooks.

    No you did the right thing. And not only that, I can be pretty sure those smug asshats walked away thinking they did a great job getting the "word" out about the "truth". Those people are delusional. All the data in the World will never change their mind. And as more things are done (hopefully) to deal with Global Warming, those people will be scratching their heads wondering why there's so much support for such actions. Kind of like the Fox News crowd who couldn't believe that Obama kicked Romney's ass in the elections. Actually it is the same crowd.

    The Fox News - Talk Radio crowd are so ill informed that they are living in a delusion of what reality is. Why right now, they firmly believe that Obama is going to pull some sort of a legal thingy doodle and be in office until 2020. But that's another story and post ....

  12. The evil U.S. is to blame, not any of you! by crazyjj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, because the U.S. is so evil and corrupt--as opposed to all of Africa, South America, Asia, most of the Middle East, etc. And despite never having had an empire to speak of--like Britain, France, Mongolia, Italy, Iran, etc.--the U.S. is clearly responsible for all the problems in the world. And when it comes to invading other countries, well, clearly no one compares to the U.S.--certainly an enlightened country like Britain would never consider something as brutish as invading 90% of the countries in the world. Only the evil, uncouth U.S. does that!

    Yes, the U.S. is the cause of all your problems. You bear absolutely no responsibility for any of your own goddamned messes. It's all those evil Americans' fault.

    --
    What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
  13. Re:IPCC politics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Other than Alaska's armpit (to coin a phrase), pretty much all going up, mostly in the 0-3mm/year range, but a hell of a lot of yellow and quite a bit of red. What exactly makes you claim it in some way debunks TFA? It appears to support it at first glance.

  14. And where do they 'camp out' climate change again? by DiscountBorg(TM) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    'In the 1970s scientists were predicting an ice age, now it's global warming.'

    There's plenty of deniers who claim warming isn't happening, who claim its a conspiracy to raise taxes, who cite a Time magazine article from the early 1970s (when global warming actually still was more or less a consensus) as evidence of some discrepancy in the sciences, because apparently 40 years of scientific advances can be refuted by misquoting what scientists 'believed' in the past.

    Deniers won't be able to find 'safe places' to camp out, it's not like one can just find a bunker and ride it out for a couple of years. Even if some now accept that warming is taking place, the science is still being denied. The net effect, doing nothing, is the same. The difference amounts to splitting hairs.

    Although it's true there are parts of the world that won't be hit as hard as others, and those of us who live there won't have to worry about camping out.

    --
    "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw